Dozens of countries hit by huge cyber attack

Microsoft says now it will make the fixes free for everyone.

Following the leak of NSA tools, Bambenek told ABC News that he had conversations with high-ranking US national security officials in which he urged them to share information with private vendors so that they could develop countermeasures because the NSA had "lost control of its own weapons".

Microsoft has issued patches to fix the vulnerability that the WannaCry ransomware was able to exploit. As such, the worm starts on one computer and quickly spreads to all vulnerable systems in the network.

The ransomware is spread by taking advantage of a Windows vulnerability that Microsoft released a security patch for in March.

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre and its National Crime Agency were looking into the United Kingdom incidents, which disrupted care at National Health Service facilities. Two security firms - Kaspersky Lab and Avast - said they identified the malicious software in more than 70 countries.

It is the latest in a long line of "Ransomware" programs: malicious code which first encrypts all the computer's data with random keys, encrypts those keys with a public key belonging to the attacker, and finally presents the user with a ransom message.

Affected by the onslaught were computer networks at hospitals in Britain, Russia's interior ministry, the Spanish telecom giant Telefonica and the USA delivery firm FedEx and many other organizations.

The ransomware attack is considered the biggest in history, forcing hospitals across Britain to turn away patients and freezing computer systems at Russia's Interior Ministry. Some chemotherapy patients were even sent home because their records could not be accessed. Doctors' practices and pharmacies reported similar problems.

"This is not targeted at the NHS, it's an global attack and a number of countries and organizations have been affected", British Prime Minister Theresa May said. Hospitals, with their often outdated IT systems and trove of confidential patient data, are a particularly tempting target.

European police agency Europol said it was working to support countries, saying the malware attack was at an "unprecedented level and requires worldwide investigation".

In the U.S., FedEx Corp. reported that its Windows computers were "experiencing interference" from malware, but wouldn't say if it had been hit by ransomware.

Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of $300 (275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: "Ooops, your files have been encrypted!"

Alan Woodward, visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey, said there was evidence the ransomware was spreading using a Microsoft flaw exposed in a recent leak of information from USA intelligence agencies.

In an unexpected move, Microsoft has acted to release a security patch for several of its unsupported operating systems.

From the sources found on the Telegraph, it is believed that a group of hackers called "Shadow Brokers" are responsible for this attack.

Russia's central bank said Saturday that no incidents had "compromising the data resources" of Russian banks, state news agency Tass reported. It said the majority of the attacks targeted Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan.

"For so many organizations in the same day to be hit, this is unprecedented", Wysopal said. Authorities said they were communicating with more than 100 energy, transportation, telecommunications and financial services providers about the attack. But computers and networks that didn't update their systems remained at risk.

WannaCry is a form of "ransomware" that locks up the files on your computer and encrypts them in a way that you can not access them anymore.

Elsewhere in Europe, the attack hit Spain's Telefonica, a global broadband and telecommunications company, and knocked ticketing offline for Norway's IF Odd, a 132-year-old soccer club. Several British hospitals say they are having major comp. "It's stressful enough for someone going through recovery or treatment for cancer".

British government officials and intelligence chiefs have repeatedly highlighted the threat to critical infrastructure and the economy from cyberattacks.

In Britain, the National Cyber Security Center said it is "working round the clock" with experts to restore vital health services.

"The WannaCry ransomware outbreak is a wakeup call for the world".

The ransomware, called WannaCrypt or WannaCry, locks down all the files on an infected computer and asks the computer's administrator to pay to regain control of them.

They say the factory of Renault factory at Sandouville, in northwestern France, was one of the sites affected.

Speaking Saturday after an emergency government meeting in London, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said 48 out of 248 NHS organizations were affected by the largest-ever cyberextortion attack, though "most of them are back to the normal course of business".

"Affected machines have six hours to pay up and every few hours the ransom goes up", said Kurt Baumgartner, the principal security researcher at security firm Kaspersky Lab. "I did not expect an attack on this scale".